Re: [Fwd: I-D ACTION:draft-dusseault-http-patch-08.txt]

On Jul 31, 2007, at 9:59 AM, Mark Baker wrote:

> Hi Lisa,
>
> On 7/31/07, Lisa Dusseault <lisa@osafoundation.org> wrote:
>> If we allow the server to return arbitrary bodies in a 200 response
>> to a PATCH, we'll have to be very clear on how clients should handle
>> the returned information.  A caching or synching client might use the
>> body as the new representation of the resource regardless of what
>> headers appeared in the 200 response.
>
> That would be a broken client, AFAICT.

Interesting!  What's your basis for believing that?    Would a client  
that cached the body of a 200 OK response in response to a GET behave  
correctly if it cached the body regardless of whether there was a  
Content-Location header?  According to my reading of 2616, the  
Content-Location header might or might not be there if the response  
contains a representation of the resource.


> Are you aware of any software
> which behaves this way?

No, because we don't have PATCH clients implemented yet.


>
> The normal meaning from 2616 seems to be "the request was successful,
> here's some data".  I don't see any reason to be more specific than
> that.

The 200 OK response for GET is certainly more specific than that --  
the data has a specific context, address and cache behavior  
intended.  That's what I'm driving at for PATCH.

Lisa